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The silent death of good code

amit.prasad.me

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Re: The silent death of good code

#41

Post by love2read »

ElatedOwl wrote: post #31

I think good code is even more important now. People talk about writing the code itself and being intimate with it and knowing how every nook and cranny works. This is gone. It’s more akin to on call where you’re trudging over code and understanding it as you go. Good code is easy to understand in this scenario; you get a clear view of intent, and the right details are hidden from you to keep from overwhelming you wi…

none of this even kind of addresses why the article implies that people stopped writing good code. why are we going to spend "a lot more reading code than before"? is this an ai generated comment?

Re: The silent death of good code

#43

Post by MattGaiser »

IhateAI_3 wrote: post #25
nemothekid wrote: post #6

This is something I've been thinking about as I start to adopt more agent-first coding. There is a real advantage to having good code especially when using agents. "Good Code" makes iteration faster, the agent is unlikely to make mistakes and will continue to produce extensible code that can easily be debugged (by both you and the agent). A couple months ago I refactored a module that had gotten unweildly, and I trie…

[flagged]

> Is there anything you really have to get done regardless of quality right this second?

A vast number of things. There are a vast number of things I will accept having done in even mediocre quality, as in the old pre-AI world, I would never get to them at all.

Every friend with a startup idea. Every repetitive form I have to fill out every month for compliance. Just tooling for my day to day life.

Re: The silent death of good code

#44

Post by FjordWarden »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #23

I love the sentiment, but 40 years in the business realm of software development has taught me “good code” is never a priority for management. It’s difficult to explain good unit testing, tech debt, or just going through proper solution selection with management. So having used Claude Code since it came out I’ve decided the resulting code is overall just as good as what I’d see in regular programming scenarios.

Let management argue there case, don't do it for them.

Re: The silent death of good code

#45

Post by amitprasad »

FjordWarden wrote: post #36

Man am I getting tired of these articles and we can do without this neurotic melancholic whining. Maybe it is the title of the article that triggered me, but it reminded me of hearing Douglas Murray read excerpts from "The Strange Death of Europe" in his self-aggrandising pompous tone. The authors colleague needed a couple of tries to write a kernel extension and somehow this means something about programming. If it…

To be clear, I am also having the most fun I've had when it comes to side-projects and even more exploratory things at work. I don't derive all my joy from "Good Code" -- that's silly! I would much rather ship tangible products and features and/or tackle things at home that I wouldn't otherwise.

On the other hand, the other responsibilities of being an engineer have become quite a bit less appealing.

Re: The silent death of good code

#46

Post by love2read »

logicprog wrote: post #24

This feels very odd to me, because I'm actually able to refactor and DRY and generally improve my code and tests and documentation much more with agents to help speed up the process than I ever would have before. I also make sure to describe and break down problems when I ask an agent to implement them in such a way that they produce code that I think is elegant. It seems to me like people think there's only two sett…

> Either sleeping away carefully on the craft of your code manually writing it, or shitting out first pass vide-coded stuff without really taking care to specify the problem or iterate on the code afterwards.

I think the thing you are missing is that people are

> shitting out first pass vide-coded stuff without really taking care to specify the problem or iterate on the code afterwards

to assume that people will take a path other than the path of least resistance now when they never did before, such as copy-pasting directly from stackoverflow without understanding the implications of the code.

Re: The silent death of good code

#47

Post by ElatedOwl »

love2read wrote: post #41
ElatedOwl wrote: post #31

I think good code is even more important now. People talk about writing the code itself and being intimate with it and knowing how every nook and cranny works. This is gone. It’s more akin to on call where you’re trudging over code and understanding it as you go. Good code is easy to understand in this scenario; you get a clear view of intent, and the right details are hidden from you to keep from overwhelming you wi…

none of this even kind of addresses why the article implies that people stopped writing good code. why are we going to spend "a lot more reading code than before"? is this an ai generated comment?

The author effectively argues deep thinking is dead, that people are no longer going to take the time to understand the problem and solution space before they solve it.

I think that’s untrue, I think it’s /more/ important than before. I think you’re going to have significantly more leverage with these tools if you’re capable of thinking.

If you’re not, you’re just going to produce garbage extremely fast.

The use of these tools does not preclude you from being the potter at the clay wheel.

Re: The silent death of good code

#49

Post by majormajor »

love2read wrote: post #41
ElatedOwl wrote: post #31

I think good code is even more important now. People talk about writing the code itself and being intimate with it and knowing how every nook and cranny works. This is gone. It’s more akin to on call where you’re trudging over code and understanding it as you go. Good code is easy to understand in this scenario; you get a clear view of intent, and the right details are hidden from you to keep from overwhelming you wi…

none of this even kind of addresses why the article implies that people stopped writing good code. why are we going to spend "a lot more reading code than before"? is this an ai generated comment?

Hm? The article is pretty clear about two claims, IMO: (1) good code has been rare for a long time because the job is a pragmatic one and not a philosophical one but that sometimes "good code" pays off down the line, and (2) possibly the "pays off down the line" will be less important in the future with AI coding tools.

And the comment by 'ElatedOwl is pretty directly responding to that second idea.

Re: The silent death of good code

#50

Post by oofbey »

FjordWarden wrote: post #36

Man am I getting tired of these articles and we can do without this neurotic melancholic whining. Maybe it is the title of the article that triggered me, but it reminded me of hearing Douglas Murray read excerpts from "The Strange Death of Europe" in his self-aggrandising pompous tone. The authors colleague needed a couple of tries to write a kernel extension and somehow this means something about programming. If it…

You know what nobody misses? Good assembly code. Those were the days.
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